New waffle iron

I was baking waffles today, using my not-so-secret recepy. I needed about fifteen of them, and murphy helped me let it take far longer than initially expected. I had already made some errors in creating the dough (though nothing that I couldn't fix), and when I had eventually finished it and was halfway through baking those waffles, my waffle iron broke down. Which wasn't totally unexpected, given how this is a waffle iron that was part of the inheritance of an aunt of my dad's who had died even before I was born, which must have been approximately fourty years ago. Still, it had me sitting there with a broken waffle iron, a promise that I'd be baking waffles for a fundraising activity, and only half the number of waffles that I needed. I had found myself a slight little problem.

So, I went to a local shop, had a look at the waffle irons that they had for sale, and chose one that looked OK to me. I hadn't taken a close look at the box, but the saleswoman had shown me the device and it looked well suited for my needs.

Once home, I showed it to my brother. Who promptly exclaimed that 'it is the same as the old one'. At first, I wanted to protest; but on close examination of the picture on the box, I had to agree that he was right!

They had restyled the one inside the box—given it a different colour, and used a temperature dial with a more modern look—but it was, indeed, the same model. And this redesign must have happened fairly recently; the illustratory pictures in the user manual still show the 'old' style design, which is identical to the old waffle iron, modulo approximately fourty years of technical evolution. In fact, the single most drastic change between the old device and the pictures in the manual of the new one would seem to be the fact that the company producing these devices changed names in the mean time. They also appear to be having a website, which contains pictures of yet another design of the same appliance.

I was baffled.

I mean, sure, home appliances are not computers, and I could imagine how a waffle iron, designed five years ago, would still be in sale today. But after that long?

What I haven't checked yet, for lack of time, is whether the irons of the old device would fit in the new device. I'll do that tomorrow, because the old device had a 4x6 "Brussels waffles" iron, whereas the new only came with a double 4x7 "Home-made waffles" iron, and an iron for six heart-shaped biscuit waffles. If that would fit, then that would save me an expense of 32 euros—I love baking Brussels waffles, so any waffle iron I use needs to be able to do those. Even if it can only do so one waffle at a time. The ability to use the iron of that 40-year-old thing in the new device would be... great.